The present invention relates generally to a welding apparatus and, more particularly, a welding apparatus having a receptacle to facilitate the mounting of a component of the welding apparatus.
In the construction and assembly of various types of apparatus, the actual assembly of the apparatus is an important factor in the overall cost of the production of the apparatus and, therefore, it is of paramount importance that the cost of assembly procedures and assembly steps be kept to a minimum while still, obviously, providing a quality apparatus that is robust and therefore desirable to the customer.
As such, it is therefore important to facilitate the assembly process of such apparatus to minimize the individual steps that are required by the assembler in the assembly line in order to make those assembly steps as simple to carry out as possible, within the aforementioned guidelines, so as to reduce the cost of manufacturing the apparatus. Since the time that it takes to carry out any particular step in the assembly process is also costly, it is, therefore, of importance to make the assembly of an apparatus require a minimum of manipulations by the assembler and preferably without the use of hand tools or separate fasteners or hardware that is needed to affix a component to the apparatus.
In the case of welding apparatus, one of such components that must be assembled is a solenoid gas valve and which is a component that is added to the apparatus during the assembly line in the manufacturing facilities and therefore any steps to better facilitate its installation to the apparatus would be advantageous in reducing the cost of such manufacture. The welding apparatus itself comprises an enclosure to which there is affixed, end panels that are generally constructed of a molded plastic material. There are certain needs for such mounting, that is, the gas valve requires an inlet port that is accessible external of the welding apparatus so that a separate supply of a shielding gas can readily be connected to the inlet port and conventionally, that inlet port is a female pipe threaded opening to which a male pipe threaded connection is connected to supply the shielding gas to the gas valve.
Thus, the gas valve, when mounted, must be affixed to the end panel in a manner that is resistant to torsional forces since the male gas fitting is screwed into the female inlet port of the gas valve and the tightening and untightening of the connection can impose considerable torsional forces on the gas valve itself. The gas valve is normally, therefore, assembled by being mounted to the internal surface of one of the end panels with accessibility of the inlet port external of the end panel.
At the present, the gas valve has a generally hexagonal configured body and its installation is carried out by inserting the valve through the back of an opening in an end panel and a retaining nut is affixed to the outside of the end panel to hold the valve tightly against the panel and thus the assembly requires extra assembly hardware, including retaining nuts, gaskets etc, as well as requiring costly assembly time necessary to actually retain the valve in the desired position within the welding apparatus.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to have a simple means of assembling the gas valve to an end panel of a welding apparatus to facilitate that assembly procedure while providing torsional strength to resist torsional forces that can be imposed on the gas valve while, at the same time, providing access to the inlet port of the gas valve external of the welding apparatus.